10Jan16

The new Taliban leader whose shadow hangs over Afghan peace talks

When representatives of four nations meet Monday to plan peace talks aimed
at ending nearly four decades of fighting in Afghanistan, the most important
figure is almost sure to be absent.

Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the leader of the Taliban, is likely to remain in
hiding when U.S., Afghan, Pakistani and Chinese officials meet in Islamabad
to lay the groundwork for future talks. Nonetheless, his shadow will hang over
the proceedings.

In the six months since word leaked that the Taliban's founder, Mohammad
Omar, had died in 2013, Mansour has proved to be nearly as enigmatic as his
reclusive, one-eyed predecessor. Many current and former Taliban members
say Mansour is a moderate who represents Afghanistan's best chance in more
than a decade to strike a deal with the Islamists. He is a pragmatist, they say,
who, as the Taliban's aviation minister, recruited communists to keep the
nation's airplanes operating.

"In the Taliban movement, there are not a lot of people like Mullah Mansour,"
said Waheed Mojda, a former Taliban diplomat who is now an analyst in
Kabul. "He is a very good man for peace talks. He is a man who understands
the situation of the world and not just the continuation of fighting."

Under Mansour's command, however, the Taliban has not just continued to
fight, it has excelled at it. In October, the Taliban overran the northern city of
Kunduz. A month later, the insurgents swept through the southern province of
Helmand, capturing the city of Sangin. Although both cities were eventually
regained by Afghan forces, the Taliban controls more territory than at any
point since it was driven from power in 2001.

Despite those gains, Mansour has faced opposition from within Taliban ranks.
He has been accused by splinter groups of ruthlessly assassinating rivals and
endorsing democracy, among other things. Some disaffected Taliban
members have even joined their archrival, the Islamic State.

"We don't trust Mansour," said Abdul Manan Niazi, the spokesman for one
Taliban splinter group. "He has even said it's possible that he will accept a
democratic system in Afghanistan."

Adding to the confusion surrounding Mansour are claims that he was wounded
in a shootout last month near his home in Quetta, Pakistan.

Most analysts disagree, pointing to an audiotape released after the alleged
shootout as evidence that Mansour is alive. But uncertainty clings to both
Mansour and the upcoming talks.

His life is mostly a mystery. According to his official Taliban biography, he was
born in 1968 in the village of Band-i-Taimoor in rural Kandahar, a
poppy-growing province at the heart of the drug trade, and was wounded
several times while fighting the Soviets as a teenager.

"He was an ordinary fighter, said Syed Muhammad Akbar Agha, a former
Taliban commander who fought the Soviets alongside Mansour. "I don't
remember him being good at shooting or blowing up tanks."

If Mansour was exceptional, Agha said, it was because he was more patient
and tolerant than most other mujahideen. "From a religious and personal
point of view, he was a moderate person."

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Mansour studied Islamic texts at a
madrassa in the Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan. Shortly after Omar founded
the Taliban in 1994 to end corruption and infighting among the mujahideen,
Mansour hired five buses and drove 150 men to Kandahar to join, according
to journalist Sami Yousafzai.

When the Taliban captured Kandahar, Omar appointed Mansour head of
airport security. And when the Taliban swept into Kabul a year later, Mansour
became aviation minister.

Mansour's allies and enemies alike point to his time in that post as proof of his
character. Like other Taliban ministers, Mansour had no technical expertise.
He had inherited a fleet of damaged planes but had no idea how to fix them.
Unlike other ministers, he actively recruited communists who had fled the
country.

"He started to collect technicians and engineers," Mojda said, "and slowly,
slowly, they started to repair these aircraft."

Mansour flew to Germany in 1998 to buy airplane and helicopter parts,
according to Yousafzai.

To his supporters, Mansour's five years in charge of aviation shows flexibility
that bodes well for a post-conflict Afghanistan. But to his detractors, it reveals
dangerous signs of self-interest.

"He was trafficking drugs using the airlines," said Niazi, now Mansour's rival
but at the time a Taliban governor and spokesman. "I have seen it with my
own eyes. He was sending drugs to Dubai inside candy wrappers."

Current and former officials from the United States, the United Nations and
Afghanistan concur.

"Mullah Mansour, when he was not yet a leader of the Taliban, was among
those Taliban involved in drug trafficking," said Hashim Wahdatyar,
Afghanistan program officer for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. "But the
whole Taliban regime was . . . and still is," he added, alleging that Mansour
sits atop a drug network that nets the Taliban more than $200 million a year.

When the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in late 2001, Mansour
surrendered and was allowed to return to Kandahar, according to journalist
Bette Dam. But after U.S. forces repeatedly raided his house, Mansour fled to
Pakistan. From there, he helped plot the group's resurgence, persuading
many to rejoin.

As other Taliban commanders were arrested or imprisoned, Mansour rose
through the ranks. When Omar's deputy was arrested in Pakistan in 2010,
Mansour was named as his replacement.

Mansour became Omar's right-hand man "kind of by default," said Thomas
Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Again, however,
Mansour proved surprisingly proficient. "He effectively led the Taliban during a
very complicated time, which was the U.S. surge in 2010, when Obama
wanted to kick the Taliban over," he said.

When Omar died in April 2013, Mansour and a few other Taliban members
met at his deathbed to choose a successor, Mojda said. The decision had to
be made before burying Omar, he said, so not all members of the shura, or
advisory council, were invited. Those in attendance chose Mansour, but they
also decided to keep both Omar's death and the change in leadership a
secret, Mojda said.

For two years, Mansour allegedly issued announcements in Omar's name,
including some related to a Taliban political office in Qatar that engaged in
secret peace talks with U.S. officials. The Taliban was engaged in peace talks
last July when news broke that Omar was long dead. The talks foundered as
some Taliban members accused Mansour of usurping the throne.

"He led a coup against the leadership," Niazi said. "They say Mullah Omar was
sick and he died as a result of that illness, but it's most likely that he was
poisoned."

Other Taliban leaders also defected, with a few joining the Islamic State's
growing movement. By and large, however, Mansour has kept his movement
together, according to a Taliban member who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the danger in talking about the group to outsiders.

"Mullah Mansour has faced serious challenges as the field commanders and
fighters asked questions why Mullah Omar's death news was kept secret from
them for two years," he said. "Some commanders publicly raised the issue
and expressed suspicion over his alleged role, but he overcame the leadership
crisis, and most of his critics accepted him as the leader of the movement."

Mansour silenced some critics by paying them off with money or powerful
positions, analysts say. Others were killed.

As his forces made advances last year, Mansour alternated between stridency
and openness to peace talks. On Saturday, the Taliban released a cagily
worded statement, saying that "jihad in Afghanistan is a legal right of
Afghans, because our country is under the U.S. occupation," yet "political
efforts are also underway."

Taliban members are expected to attend Monday's meeting, but Ruttig said he
sees signs that the group under Mansour is ready to share power. "I think the
Taliban has learned," he said. "They have become more adaptable to the
outside world and more responsive to what other Afghans think."

He warned against calling Mansour a moderate, however.

"The Taliban is a pretty violent movement," he said. "But we need to think
about the conflict in Afghanistan and if there is a way to break out of that
vicious circle going back to almost 40 years. If you have an adversary who is
willing to talk, you should use that."

[Source: By Michael E. Miller, The Washington Post, Kabul, 10Jan16]

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